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Space Odyssey series
Space Odyssey series by Arthur C. Clarke * Genre: Classic Science Fiction, Space Exploration Theme * The general belief is that 2001 is about an out of control AI computer that holds an astronaut prisoner on a ship. That is only a fraction of what this story is about. The movie may have emphasized that more then the book to have caused this common idea. * The book was written prior to man visiting the moon, so in part, this work is an imaginative exploration of what the future of space exploration will become. * The book explores the Perils of technology and of Nuclear war. * It even tackles the evolution of man and the question of if some form of outside agency influence our earlier development. See Wikipedia for a more detailed analysis of the themes covered in the first book. Books in series # 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - #* (See: Plot Summary for story details.) # 2010: Odyssey Two (1982) #* (See: Plot Summary for story details.) # 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) #* (See: Plot Summary for story details.) # 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997) #* (See: Plot Summary for story details.) * The Lost Worlds of 2001 - The Lost Worlds of 2001 is an accompaniment to 2001. The book consists of behind-the-scenes notes from Clarke about scriptwriting and production issues. Also included in the book is Clarke's short story, The Sentinel, on which Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey is loosely based. Description 2001: The first book, 2001: A Space Odyssey was written in 1968 at the same time as the movie, by the same name was being produced by Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. Clarke and Kubrick worked on the book together, but eventually only Clarke ended up as the official author. The story is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, including "The Sentinel" (written in 1948 for a BBC competition, but first published in 1951 under the title "Sentinel of Eternity"). By 1992, the novel had sold three million copies worldwide.1 An elaboration of Clarke and Kubrick's collaborative work on this project was made in The Lost Worlds of 2001. The first part of the novel, in which aliens influence the primitive ancestors of humans, is similar to the plot of an earlier Clarke story, "Encounter in the Dawn". 2010: Set in the year 2010, the plot for 2010: Odyssey Two centers on a joint Soviet-American mission aboard the Soviet spacecraft The Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. The mission has several objectives, including salvaging the spaceship Discovery and investigating the mysterious "monolith" discovered by Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1983. Clarke acknowledged such inconsistencies in the Author's Note to 2061:Clarke, Arthur C. 2061: Odyssey Three. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988. Page ix :Just as 2010: Odyssey Two was not a direct sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, so this book is not a linear sequel to 2010. They must all be considered as variations on the same theme, involving many of the same characters and situations, but not necessarily happening in the same universe. Developments since 1964 make total consistency impossible, as the later stories incorporate discoveries and events that had not even taken place when the earlier books were written. 2061: 2061: Odyssey Three is a science-fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1987. It is the third book in Clarke's Space Odyssey series. It returns to one of the lead characters of the previous novels, Heywood Floyd, and his adventures from the 2061 return of Halley's Comet to Jupiter's moon Europa. Clarke had originally intended to write the third book after NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter had returned its findings in the late 1980s. The probe had been initially scheduled for launch in 1984 but this was delayed first to 1985 and then to 1986. It was delayed further in wake of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Deciding not to wait, Clarke took inspiration for his sequel from the return of Halley's Comet. Galileo was eventually launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission in October 1989. It arrived in Jovian orbit almost eight years after the publication of 2061: Odyssey Three. The opening chapters of 2061 gradually explain the events that have taken place in the interim years. The new sun, dubbed 'Lucifer', has transformed the moons of the former Jupiter: Io has become a volcanic hellhole, Europa an ocean world shrouded by clouds, and Ganymede a temperate world that the human race is colonizing. Large-scale interplanetary travel is now commercially viable with muon-catalyzed fusion-powered spacecraft. But humanity is wary of sending spacecraft close to Europa despite its fascinating mysteries, including the appearance of a large mountain, dubbed 'Mount Zeus', on its surface. On Earth, a period of relative peace has evolved between the United States, Soviet Union, and China, although a non-violent revolution has taken place in South Africa (now the United States of Southern Africa or USSA); the white population has fled, taking most of the country's wealth with them and leaving the black population to rebuild the economy, which they do in a matter of weeks thanks to the country's diamond mines.Wikipedia] 3001: ''3001: The Final Odyssey'' is a 1997 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. It is the fourth and final book in Clarke's Space Odyssey series. This novel begins with a brief prologue describing the bioforms — dubbed the First-Born — who created the black monoliths. They evolved from "primordial soup", and over the course of millions of years, became a space-faring species. Perceiving that nothing was more precious than "mind," they catalyzed the evolution of intelligent species wherever they went, by increasing the intelligent species' chance of survival. After visiting Earth, the First-Born found a way to impress themselves into the fabric of space and time, becoming effectively immortal. Meanwhile, the monoliths—implied to have been forgotten by their creators when they ascended to a higher state of being—continued to watch over their subjects. 3001 follows the adventures of Frank Poole, the astronaut killed by the HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. One millennium later, Poole's freeze-dried body is discovered in the Kuiper belt by a comet-collecting space tug named the Goliath, and revived. Poole is taken home to learn about the Earth in the year 3001. Some of its notable features include the BrainCap, a brain–computer interface technology; genetically engineered dinosaur servants; and four gigantic space elevators located evenly around the Equator. Humans have also colonized the Jovian moons Ganymede and Callisto. TMA-1, the black monolith found on the Moon in 1999, has been brought to Earth in 2006 and installed in front of the United Nations Building in New York City. Wikipedia 2001: Book vs Film James Blish commented that while Clarke's narrative provided essential elements of the story that Kubrick ignored or glossed over, "The novel has very little of the poetry of the picture" and "lacks most of the picture's strengths", but that "it has to be read before one can understand the picture"."The Future in Books", Amazing Stories, January 1969, pp. 141-42 Although the novel and film were developed simultaneously, the novel follows early drafts of the film, from which the final version of the film deviated. These changes were often for practical reasons relating to what could be filmed economically, and a few were due to differences of opinion between Kubrick and Clarke. The most notable differences are a change in the destination planet from Saturn to Jupiter, and the nature of the sequence of events leading to HAL's demise. Stylistic differences may be more important than content differences. Of lesser importance are the appearance of the monolith, the age of HAL, and the novel giving names to various spacecraft, prehistoric apes, and HAL's inventor. Stylistically, the novel generally fleshes out and makes concrete many events left somewhat enigmatic in the film, as has been noted by many observers. Vincent LeBrutto has noted that the novel has "strong narrative structure" which fleshes out the story, while the film is a mainly visual experience where much remains "symbolic". Randy Rasmussen has noted that the personality of Heywood Floyd is different; in Clarke's novel, he finds space travel thrilling, acting almost as a "spokesman for Clarke", whereas in the film, he experiences space travel as "routine" and "tedious". Wikipedia /Differences from the film Content Rating Comments References Category:Classic Science Fiction Series